China and the European Union (EU) announced Thursday the launch of a joint project to boost the clean development mechanism (CDM) in China.

According to the agreement, the EU will pour 2.8 million euros into the the EU-China CDM Facilitation Project which aims to promote sustainable development in China by developing the regulatory and policy regimes affecting the application of the CDM in China.

The project targets EU and China joint climate change objectives, said Nicholas Costello, first counselor of the Delegation of the European Commission to China and Mongolia, when addressing the project launch ceremony.

"(The project) will facilitate the implementation of the CDM, make it easier to exchange information on CDM projects and encourage EU companies to engage in CDM projects in China and hence to tackle climate change on a global scale," Costello said.

The EU-China Facilitation Project, which will run until 2010, will support China's CDM through research, capacity development, technical exchange and training activities.

Technical cooperation will be established with Chinese government agencies, standards and certification companies and wider stakeholder groups so that knowledge of CDM issues can be widely disseminated, Costello added.

The promotion of CDM is a specific objective of the EU-China Climate Change Partnership that was established in 2005.

The CDM was set up under the Kyoto protocol to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to which China and the EU are parties.

CDM allows developed countries to achieve part of their emission reduction commitments by investing in emission-saving projects in developing countries and counting the reductions achieved toward their own commitments to control greenhouse gas emissions.